[mythtv-users] Easy Cable Box Integration

[Joe Votour]

Quoting John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com>:

>>  If we're lucky, then the FCC-mandated channels will actually stay at
>>  the same frequencies, and not moved around (as Comcast seems to do on
>>  a bi-weekly basis), but everything else will be the equivalent of
>>  "on-demand".  Channels won't be pumped out over the wire until
>>  somebody wants to watch them, and based on people's viewing habits,
> I seriously doubt that being that this would require much more
> bandwidth (unless this ondemand could be shared by more than one set
> top box) and be a lot more complicated. Its a lot easier for them to
> send the exact same feed to all users and regulate what channels each
> user gets (through encryption) by requiring every user to have a set
> top box.
>
> John

Multiple set-top boxes would share one copy of a program, for optimal  
bandwidth savings.  Naturally I can't go into implementation details,  
but trust me, it's not very complicated to implement, it's some simple  
per-stream/per-set-top accounting.  I wrote an implementation of it  
months ago, and QA hasn't logged any bugs against it for a while.  ;)

I refer you to Wikipedia for more information on the concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video

The big value proposition for the cable operator is that they can save  
tons of bandwidth by only streaming the 30 channels that people are  
watching, instead of all 200 channels that they offer.  This bandwidth  
can then be used for more cable modem traffic, VoIP, or real On-Demand.

-- Joe


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